It is time for the international
community to address itself directly to the most serious of North Korea’s human
rights violations—the prison labor camps. Situated in the mountains of North
Korea, the camps are estimated to hold some 100,000 to 200,000 prisoners, including
whole families, many of whom are not expected to survive.

The issue has come to the fore through the
combined efforts of human rights NGOs and former North Korean prisoners who
have escaped the country. For several decades, NGOs, academics and journalists from
the United States, Western Europe and the Republic of Korea have conducted
painstaking research to unearth verifiable information about the camps and North
Korea’s overall human rights situation. They have come up with persuasive evidence
despite the regime’s efforts to conceal its conduct through denial of access. The
last time a human rights organization was allowed into North Korea was in 1995
when Amnesty International visited the capital under heavy restrictions. Since
that time, no human rights NGO or UN human rights expert looking into North
Korea has been allowed into the country. When in 2003 the Committee for Human
Rights in North Korea published its widely quoted report about the penal labor
camps, updated in 2012, it was unable to set foot in North Korea. It relied instead
on the testimony of those who escaped the country. Of the 25,000 North Koreans
who have made their way to the South over the past ten to fifteen years,
hundreds were former prisoners and former prison guards. Their testimonies were
found to largely corroborate one other and have been verified by satellite
photos. North Koreans hiding in China have reinforced this testimony as well.

The accumulated information contradicts
Pyongyang’s assertions that there are no human rights violations in North Korea
nor any labor camps. In fact, governments
and the United Nations have come to rely on the NGO information in producing
their own reports and policy positions. The information will prove critical as
well to any transitional justice measures developed to hold North Korean
authorities accountable. The South Korean NGO, the Data Base Center for North
Korean Human Rights and others have been compiling information on individual
prisoners, including those currently held in the camps and on the perpetrators
so that the information can become the basis for accountability in the future.

But there are serious challenges to
this work that need to be addressed. Because the testimony of survivors has
been damaging to North Korea, the Kim regime has sought to stem the flow of
North Koreans escaping to tell their stories. It has been cracking down at the
border in collaboration with China and has reduced by nearly half the number of
North Koreans escaping through China to South Korea. In 2012, some 1500 reached
the South as compared to close to 2,800 the year before. North Korea of late has
been filling its detention centers with people trying to escape or those pushed
back. Its most recent foray was into Laos to forcibly bring back a group of
young North Koreans.

North Korean authorities have also
harassed defectors in the South, sometimes by designating them enemies of the
state, hacking into their computers or punishing their family members, friends
and colleagues left behind. North Koreans who come out are haunted by what has
happened or may happen to those with whom they were close.

Still another impediment to collecting
information has been the lack of resources. Whether in the United States or
South Korea, resources are limited when it comes to NGO research and
publication of reports, even though the importance of putting the information
out there could not be more evident. While new technology, the growing role of
private markets, and some courageous North Koreans sending out messages have
been eroding the information blockade, significant gaps remain in what we know.
This includes the rate of deaths in detention, the extent to which whole
families continue to be incarcerated, the status of existing camps and the numbers
and punishment of North Koreans forcibly repatriated from China. Nonetheless,
as a well-attended conference in Washington on the gulag concluded last year, “We
know enough” to make a serious case meriting action.

Indeed, defector testimony – the main
source of information about North Korea’s camp violations – has begun to be
given more weight by UN officials and governments. For many years United
Nations High Commissioners for Human Rights espoused the view that it was
necessary for the UN itself to assess
the situation on the ground in order to form an independent diagnosis. Even the
annual State Department Human Rights Reports on North Korea include a disclaimer
about defector testimony and being able fully to assess human rights conditions.
But increasingly, UN and government officials have come to realize that the
gold standard of proof in which international monitors can verify on the ground
every piece of information is unrealistic when a country has a deliberate
closed door policy. Moreover, constantly drawing attention to the lack of fully
verifiable information on North Korea can serve as a rationale for inaction and
could even have the unintended effect of lending support to North Korea’s
claims that the human rights abuses reported are unfounded emanating from those
who have betrayed their country.

Last year, the world body made important
strides on this point. After some ten years of resolutions and requests for
dialogue and entry into North Korea, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights
in North Korea declared that human rights violations had reached “a critical
mass.” And the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights took the decision to meet with
camp survivors for the first time and called North Korea’s human rights
situation unparalleled. She declared: “I don’t think the world should stand by
and see this kind of situation, which is not improving at all.” With the
support of Japan and the European Union, followed by South Korea and the United
States, the 47 member Human Rights Council set up a commission of inquiry in
March to investigate whether North Korea’s violations constitute crimes against
humanity for which its officials could be held accountable. The vote was by consensus,
reflecting a growing international unanimity around North Korea’s widespread
abuses.

But the commission of inquiry will face
many challenges. When it comes to the penal labor camps, or to forced
abductions, information is available to establish crimes against humanity, but when
it comes to other violations, a great deal of time and effort will be needed to
put together the information required. If the commission needs to extend its
work—it was allotted a year—then Japan, the European Union, and the
US-South Korean alliance should be ready to support its continuation, even
though China will be on the Council next year. And these countries must be
prepared to recommend strong steps if North Korea is found to be committing crimes
against humanity.

The commission should not be considered
an end in itself but rather part of a larger strategy at the UN to promote
human rights in North Korea. There is a myriad of UN offices and agencies – whether
on refugees, health, information, food and development, that are involved with
North Korea. The entire system should be tapped to reinforce human rights where
it can. Humanitarian agencies, for example, which emphasize the importance of
reaching the most vulnerable in the society should at least be expected to strategize
about gaining access to the camps, especially to reach children, who pose no
danger to North Korea’s security.

In their bilateral relations with North
Korea, both the United States and South Korea have been cautious when it comes
to raising human rights issues. Political and strategic issues and preoccupation
with North Korea’s nuclear program have been the main reasons. But it is also
true that discussions over sensitive strategic and nuclear issues with the
former Soviet Union did not stop human rights discussions. Nor do discussions
with China preclude reference to human rights concerns. With North Korea the
ground needs to shift and there are signs it is beginning to. In the past, the
camps were always considered too provocative to talk about, but in March Ambassador
Glyn Davies told the Senate that “The world is increasingly taking note” of
North Korea’s human rights violations, and he specifically drew attention to North
Korea’s “elaborate network of political prison camps” on which he commented at
some length, and made reference to defector testimony – Shin Dong-hyuk and the
book Escape from Camp 14. “How the DPRK addresses human rights,”
he continued, “will have a significant impact on prospects for improved
U.S.-DPRK ties.” And in his confirmation hearings, Secretary Kerry also
publicly pointed to the gulags in North Korea and spoke of an American
leadership role here.

It is now time for these pronouncements
to make their way into actual policy toward North Korea. Otherwise the issues which
North Korea can benefit from—food issues or family reunification issues for
which they receive payments—would principally be on the table together with possible
training programs for select lawyers handpicked by Pyongyang.

Last month’s G8 communique urged North
Korea for the first time to address human rights violations and it specified the
abductions of foreigners and the treatment of returned refugees. But it omitted
reference to the camps. And the May Joint Declaration of Presidents Obama and
Park Geun-hye omitted human rights principles as a foundation of peaceful
reunification. Denuclearization, democracy and a market economy were mentioned
but do not adequately cover those principles.

On this 60th anniversary of the US-ROK
alliance, it is time for the US and South Korea to begin to end the
exceptionalism accorded North Korea in the human rights area, and to develop a
strategy with other countries and international institutions for bringing onto
the diplomatic agenda international access to North Korea’s political prisoners.

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The views and opinions expressed here are those of the authors' and not those of any other person, organization, or entity; they are the authors' alone. Specifically, they do not represent the views of the Board of Directors of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK) nor necessarily reflect the official policy or position of HRNK.